Recently I was talking with a teen-age friend of mine. She said, "Sunday School is OK. I've been going since I was three. But why can't teachers think up something besides, 'How did you use Christian Science this week?' Or, 'Did you read the lesson?' That's so boring!"
As she talked, I listened. How often I had used this technique in teaching in Sunday School! I asked myself some questions. Were these young people learning how to find practical, spiritual answers for their human needs and aspirations? What was each one's interest, yearning, and ambition? For the next few weeks I listened intently to each one. I wanted to know what was really of concern to these young people. I wanted to help them find the specific spiritual truths that would meet their needs and aspirations.
A high school student was condemning himself because he had not yet felt any necessity to read the whole Lesson-Sermon every day. He said, "When I don't, I feel guilty." He was referring to the Bible Lessons in the Christian Science Quarterly that Christian Scientists study regularly.
Our class discussion that Sunday had included the thought that the lesson isn't just ink, paper, and words but a message of spiritual truth designed to help each one of us learn that he is the very loved of Love, God, and an expression of divine Life. We brought out the point that we can begin to realize through our own study that we are actually held in the activity of the Christ, Truth, and that the omnipresent intelligence of the all-knowing Mind is ours to claim and express.
The ensuing week the young man began to study the lesson expectantly and was impressed by this Bible passage: "The Lord is with you, while ye be with him; and if ye seek him, he will be found of you." II Chron. 15:2; In the same lesson he found of special interest the reference where Mrs. Eddy writes, "The spiritual man's consciousness and individuality are reflections of God." Science and Health, p. 336; He applied these truths to himself while studying for school examinations.
He began to see that there really is only one Mind, one divine intelligence, God. This helped him accept the fact that Mind is the source of intelligence, and that because each one's relationship to God includes the expression of intelligence, he could always know what he needed to know. He began to recognize the spiritual fact that pride of intellect or the dullness of stupidity, or even retardation, could yield to the omnipresent activity of divine intelligence. As he accepted these scientific, provable truths, the burden of tension and excitement at examination time completely left him, and he was actually happy and calm through the whole week of exams. He said, "Can you believe it, my grade point went up a notch?"
At another Sunday School session a girl in the class said her greatest fear was that she would not be spiritually mature enough to deal with the questions of sex and the desire to be popular. We agreed that this could be a problem for any of us. After some discussion the class decided the solution lies in turning to the spiritual, provable fact that not physicality but spiritual -mindedness alive with zest, wit, and kindness is real attraction—and like attracts like. The class began to see that pure, spiritual thinking protects one from the onslaughts of material sense. Christ Jesus taught, "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." Matt. 5:8;
Science and Health instructs us, "Tenderness accompanies all the might imparted by Spirit." Science and Health, p. 514; I have come to see that it is the gentle action of ever-present divine Love that inspires each member of a Sunday School class, including the teacher, to do better thinking, to think with greater spiritual exactitude. The strength and power of divine Principle animates and stabilizes the exchange of ideas unfolding individually.
The teacher has been given no greater trust or more sacred duty than to reach out in love to the thought of the Sunday School pupils. Helping them find out what to do spiritually, rather than lingering over what not to do humanly, can lift burdens of doubt, timidity, self-depreciation, boredom, and discouragement. There is a spiritual answer for every human need.
Realizing that all mankind must find their way to the final revelation of Truth, the Christian Science Sunday School teacher listens to the pupils and willingly works and prays to express the tender teaching of infinite Love. Mrs. Eddy affirms, "Too much cannot be done towards guarding and guiding well the germinating and inclining thought of childhood." The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 261.
